“You two never got a chance to be introduced the other day,” Jonah, one of the assistant producers, said, and threw a painfully obvious glance at the knife block on the red quartz countertop of their kitchen station. Everything on the set was accented in red, including the jackets all the chefs were wearing. A cruel joke, given how the color made Ashna look. But he was immune now.

He stuck out a hand. “Frederico Silva.”

She raised her chin, which made her jawbones stand out sharply against her skin. He had spent an absurd amount of time thinking about that jaw once. Now he looked past the poetically sharp curve, unaffected, and offered her a stranger’s smile.

“This is Chef Ashna Raje,” Jonah said when she didn’t introduce herself. Ashna had never been tongue-tied around him.

Her gaze traced the many cameras around the sprawling set, some hanging from the ceiling, some mounted on cranes, then found its way back to the hand Rico was holding out.

Another thing he’d never seen before was Ashna frozen. The speed with which she could block a goal had gobsmacked him every single time. The video going viral had to have shaken her, or maybe she simply hadn’t expected someone she’d tossed out like garbage to return. His best guess was a little of both.

“It’s nice to meet you,” he said, and finally, she shook his hand.

Quickly. Pulling away so fast he couldn’t be sure they had touched at all; maybe that’s why his own hand hung there in her wake, his palm strangely alive when he pulled back and shoved his hand into his pocket.

With another suggestive smile—which was getting a little annoying—Jonah told them that they had the next fifteen minutes to familiarize themselves with each other before the mics went on. Then off he went with the self-congratulatory gait of someone who had just won the lottery.

The network couldn’t have asked for a better accident than Rico’s idiotic knife dive. Since it had happened on Jonah’s watch, he had to be the hero of the hour.

Thinking about the knife sent a fresh jolt of pain through his knee. Maybe the decision to tweak his meds right now hadn’t been his smartest idea. His old meds made him sluggish and the new ones did nothing.

Ashna’s eyelids fluttered down as she glanced at his knee. “How is it?” she asked.